9-11/Israel did it/Israeli art scam

Introduction

For a full understanding of the information presented here the following additional Wikispooks pages should be read:

• Wikipedia's Hasbara - For an overview.
• 2001 Israeli Nerve Gas Attacks - For a related example of coordinated Zionist action on Wikipedia

Wikispooks comment

History of this article

An article on this topic entitled "Israeli art students" was created at Wikipedia in 2006 and deleted according to this discussion. No accessible record of the contents of the first article has survived.

A new and likely independent attempt to document the affair was started on 3rd March 2010 and brought up to a reasonable basic standard (size c. 11,000 characters) in a single day by a single good-faith editor. This is the version seen here - naturally it has not reached the usual standard of Wikipedia articles since there has been no cooperative input. However, it is already probably better than most starting articles and better than some "stable" or semi-permanent articles.

The following day (4th March) the new article was effectively vandalised by a different, hugely experienced editor who added "The Great Arab Refugee Scam", an ancient and entirely discredited Zionist myth, along with a new myth "Palestinian population scam on US taxpayers" increasingly popular at Wikipedia. No action was taken by administrators against this very experienced (over 25,000 edits) editor who vandalised the article, despite the well-recognised and immensely disruptive effect of irrelevant edits to an article still in development.

On the same day (ie less than 24 hours from creation), the article was nominated for deletion, another common and highly disruptive way of preventing an article ever being developed to a respectable standard. As so often before, the creator was forced to stop development while defending his creation. However, on this occasion, another editor arrived and made very major modifications, high-lighting the scam nature of the affair with particular reference to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and down-playing the very considerable spying scare that had been triggered back in 2001 (200 Israeli "students" were arrested, 140 before and 60 after 911, and some commmentators thought the proportion of military communication specialists amongst them was unusually high).

As a result of the re-write, the Wikipedia deletion (known in the jargon as an AfD, 'Article for deletion') failed. The price for this survival was to have the article changed to minimise and white-wash the affair almost to invisibility.

Wikipedia white-wash

The current Wikipedia article on the art scam was completely re-written to almost entirely remove the spying allegation and to heavily downplay the fact that all the scam-artists claimed to be Israeli and indeed (at least in the US in 2001), all of them were Israeli.

Startling news one month later

The unsanitised Wikispooks article you see here was created on 17th July 2010 in order to preserve a record of the original contents. Much of Wikipedia is maintained on its servers as a permanent visible record, but the contents of deleted articles cannot be seen. Hence the importance of saving what may be deleted.

Just 6 hours after this act of conservation at Wikispooks, the tide suddenly turned, see this edit. Weasel words and statements such as "An internal DEA report, leaked in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, gave rise to an urban myth that shaped much of the reporting about the scam were replaced by the much more honest and balanced "In one instance, an American official described allegations of spying as "urban myth".

In the following month and 152 revisions (ie 5 per day) the article ballooned from the 7,853 bytes of the sanitised version to the current 20,557 bytes perhaps as attention became focused on the importance of the topic. While the text of the article has grown nearly 3 times, use of the word "Israel" has grown more than 6 times (up from 5 times to 32 times).

The Wikipedia Zionists are notorious for taking out good references and putting in very poor ones, so it is always worth checking, separately, the bias shown by the choice of references. In this case there is little to see, use of the word "Israel" has "only" doubled from 6 to 12.

Wikispooks summary of the "Israeli Art student Scam"

In the US, particularly in the months before the 911 attacks, there were numerous reports of people identifying themselves as Israelis and selling people worthless works of art. The scam caused a number of high-profile espionage allegations against Israel because some of the methods used could easily have been a cover for real spying.

Essentially, the "Israeli art student scam" is a confidence trick (since operated by other nationalities) in which scammers approach people in their homes or on the street and attempt to sell them cheap oil paintings and frames for high prices. The paintings are represented as original and valuable art by up-and-coming talents but are in fact cheap, mass-produced works bought wholesale from China. The scammers explain that they are directly approaching people with offers because properly exhibiting the work in an art gallery would be prohibitively expensive. Framing is sometimes provided at a later date by mobile vans in order to obtain the phone numbers of willing "marks" and extract as much money as possible

The scam has also been reported in Canada , Australia, New Zealand Seattle and the Australian Northern Territory police.

Wikipedia article before Zionist attack on it

Across the world there have been numerous reports of people who identify themselves as Israeli art students fraudulently selling fake paintings to unsuspecting collectors. The scam is closely related to a number of high-profile espionage allegations against Israel during the 2001-2002 period in the United States.

The scam

The "Israeli art student scam" is a well-known confidence trick in which scammers, claiming to be travelling Israeli art students, approach people in their homes or on the street and attempt to sell them oil paintings and frames for excessive prices. The paintings are represented as original and valuable art by up-and-coming talents but are in fact cheap, mass-produced works bought wholesale from China. The scammers explain that they are directly approaching people with offers because properly exhibiting the work in an art gallery would be prohibitively expensive. Framing is often provided at a later date by mobile vans in order to obtain the phone numbers of willing "marks" and extract as much money as possible.

The scam has been reported in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Seattle .

The Australian Northern Territory police have released a warning about the scheme.

2001-2002 Israeli art student spying scandal

During the 2001-2002 period in the United States there were official reports of hundreds of young Israelis posing as art students spying on federal buildings and employees.

In January 2001 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) field offices around the country reported that the "art students" had been attempting to penetrate offices for over a year, as well as other law enforcement and Department of Defence agencies. They had also visited the homes of many DEA officers and senior federal officials and attempted to sell art. Suspicious agents observed that when the "art students" departed they did not approach their neighbours. DEA Agents reported on 130 incidents involving "art students". Some "art students" were caught diagramming the architecture of federal buildings. Some were found to have photographed federal officials.

According to Jane's Intelligence Digest, in 2002 FBI officials claimed that the "art students" were "running a major eavesdropping operation that had penetrated into the highest echelons of the US administration".

Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive warning

In March 2001, the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) issued a warning about people identifying themselves as "Israeli art students" attempting to bypass security and gain entry to federal buildings, and even to the private residences of senior federal officials under the guise of selling art. Subsequent to the NCIX bulletin, officials raised other red flags, including an United States Air Force, a Federal Protective Service (United States), an Office of National Drug Control Policy security alert and a request that the Immigration and Naturalization Service investigate a specific case. The "art students" were subsequently treated with more caution by officials.

Leaked Drug Enforcement Agency report

A leaked 60-page DEA report in 2002 revealed that up to 200 young Israelis had been arrested in America in the past year, of which about 140 were arrested before the September 11 attacks. The other 60 were arrested on October 31, 2002 by the FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service in San Diego, Kansas City, Cleveland, Houston and St. Louis, Missouri. Rather than selling art, these Israelis were working in kiosks in shopping centres across America selling toys. The FBI was investigating the kiosks as a front operation for espionage activities. The report said that most of the Israelis interrogated by Americans reported having served in the Israeli Defence Force in military intelligence, electronic signals interception and explosive ordnance units. One of the detainees was an Israeli general's son, another was a former bodyguard to the chief of the IDF, and another had operated Patriot missiles. In 2002 several officials dismissed reports of a spy ring and said the allegations were made by a Drug Enforcement Agency who was angry his theories had been dismissed.

The DEA report also claims that Israeli companies that had provided telephony services for U.S. businesses and U.S. federal organizations were connected to the "art students" and advised that Israeli telephony companies should be investigated. It raised the possibility that "back doors" had been installed in communications equipment to assist Israeli espionage.

September 11 allegations

It has been suggested that operatives in this "art student spy ring" were tracking the 9/11 hijackers and knew that the attacks were going to take place, although the Drug Enforcement Agency|DEA memo was primarily concerned with the students' efforts to foil investigations into unrelated Israeli organized crime.

German weekly Die Zeit published two articles regarding the September 11 controversy, one of which, titled "Next Door to Mohammed Atta" concerned allegations that Israeli intelligence had been tailing the 911 hijackers before the attack.

Some of the Israeli "art students" lived for a period of time in Hollywood, Florida, the same small city where Mohammed Atta and fellow terrorists had lived before September 11. Michael Ruppert in his book Crossing the Rubicon claimed that the ring had "heavy operations in some areas connected with 9/11". Ruppert and Alexander Cockburn have also argued that there was disproportionate media silence about the issue .

Canadian espionage rumors

In August 2004, a number of Israeli "art students" in Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Toronto and Ottawa were deported from Canada for working in the country illegally. The Calgary Herald wrote that the deportations "raised the specter of international espionage". However, claims that a spy ring was operating in Canada that were raised by newspapers were dismissed by Canadian officials. Officials noted that the Canadian art scammers did not target government officials or offices but instead focused on wealthy neighbourhoods

Denial of spy ring by officials

In 2002 several officials dismissed reports of a spy ring and said the allegations were made by a Drug Enforcement Agency who was angry his theories had been dismissed. Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden describe the claims as an "urban myth"

Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz also published an article on the spying allegations, noting that most of the allegations were based upon a single internal report from the DEA. It also noted that the U.S. administration was "desperate to keep the affair quiet" .

Official Israeli response

The Israeli government has denied the espionage allegations, calling them nonsense.

Summary of the DEA Report for background

In June 2001, the Office of Security of the Drug Enforcement Administration (the "DEA") issued a long report (the "DEA Report") describing in precise detail the attempts of approximately 125 or more nationals of a foreign country, most posing as art students, "to penetrate several DEA Field Offices in the continental United States." Many of these individuals also visited the residences of numerous DEA officials and "other agencies’ facilities and the residences of their employees." The DEA Report states that "these incidents have occurred since at least the beginning of 2000, and have continued to the present." They were ongoing activities in the summer of 2001.

Virtually all of the scores of individuals questioned or detained by the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement authorities were citizens of the State of Israel. They were generally organized in groups of eight to 10 people, with a single team leader (the "Israeli DEA Groups"). They worked individually or in pairs, carrying makeshift art portfolios. They visited scores of DEA offices, laboratories and houses or apartments, ostensibly to offer or show the paintings or prints in the portfolios for sale or promotion to DEA personnel.

While Israel has compulsory military service, many of those questioned by U.S. authorities had served in the military intelligence services or in electronic or communications units of the Israeli army. Thus, for example, Lior Baram of Plantation (near Hollywood), Florida, questioned by the DEA on January 22, 2001, had served two years in Israeli intelligence working with classified information; Dilka Borenstein, questioned by INS at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport ("DFW Airport") on March 27, 2001, was a "recently discharged" military intelligence officer; Marina Glikman,5 questioned at DFW Airport on or about May 1, 2001, worked for an Israeli software company with expertise in hand-held computer technology and had served as an Israeli military intelligence officer; Tomer Ben Dor, also questioned at DFW Airport on that day, worked for an Israeli wiretapping company and had served in an Israeli military unit that was "responsible for" Patriot missile defense.

The DEA’s Office of Security concluded that the Israelis "may well be engaged in organized intelligence gathering." A spokesman for the Immigration & Naturalization Service (the "INS") stated that dozens of these Israelis were expelled from the United States (from California, the Midwest, Florida and other states). "No one has tallied the total," he said.8 The expulsions were usually for visa violations.

The leaders of the Israeli DEA Groups included Itay Simon (arrested on April 14, 2001 in Irving, Texas), recently discharged from the Israeli army where he had done classified work for the Israeli military. Mr. Simon coordinated recruiting for the groups and served as an intermediary between five individuals in Israel and the U.S. operation. Another leader was Michael Calmanovic (also arrested in Irving on that day), who rented a number of apartments in Irving, Texas occupied by 25 Israelis. Mr. Calmanovic was a recently discharged electronic intercept operator for the Israeli military. As stated in the DEA Report, traveling about the U.S. to sell paintings "seem[ed] not to fit [the] background" of many of the individuals in question. A third principal was Hanan Serfaty (or Sarfati), a team leader residing in Hollywood, Florida. When questioned by the DEA in Tampa, Florida, on March 1, 2001, he had in his possession bank deposit slips amounting to more than $100,000 from December 2000 through the first quarter of 2001, and withdrawal slips for slightly less than that amount during the period. Mr. Serfaty served in the Israeli military between the ages of 18 and 21, but refused to disclose to the DEA his activities between the ages of 21 and 24, including his activities since his U.S. arrival at age 23 in 2000.14 Another was Peer Segalovitz of Tamarac, Florida (about 20 miles west of Hollywood), an active officer in an Israeli special forces battalion who commanded 80 men in the Golan Heights. He was detained in Orlando on May 3, 2001.

More details, along with maps of the residences, is available at www.antiwar.com "MEMORANDUM TO THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE".